Barbara
Bauer, grumpy about her permanent niche in the
SFWA/Writer
Beware site's '20 Worst Agents' list, has filed suit against SFWA
and the following: Ann C. Crispin and Victoria C. Strauss of Writer
Beware; James D. Macdonald and Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden of
Making Light (where BB was much discussed); and Kent Brewster.

Stephen
Baxter has been doing a little 'As Others See Us' research:
'The publisher's blurb for the Lydia Millet book on Amazon gives the
usual accolade for a Clarke nominee: "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart
is no more a SF novel than The Time-Traveller's Wife. Instead,
it is a powerful and original fiction of responsibility and guilt,
today's America, and the peculiar terrors of our nuclear world."
Fair enough!'

Arthur
C. Clarke appeared on the BBC website in his favourite
t-shirt: 'I invented the satellite and all I got was this lousy
t-shirt.'

Michael
Crichton and State of Fear weren't actually named in
Al Gore's 21 March statement before a US House committee, but the
metaphor for global warming contains a definite hint: 'The planet has a
fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor [...] if your
doctor tells you you need to intervene here, you don't say "Well, I
read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem."'
[TM]

Kenneth
Eng, sf author noted in A221
as beneficiary of some suspicious Amazon reviews, has found it's
possible to publicize oneself too much – with his sure-fire
controversial article called 'Why I Hate Blacks'. From the LA Times:
'The column, published in the San Francisco-based AsianWeek
newspaper in the waning days of African American History Month, was so
astonishingly hateful that activists of all stripes immediately rushed
forward to condemn it. AsianWeek Editor Ted Fang issued a
lengthy apology and fired Eng, who is in his early 20s and also writes
science fiction novels. The small press that published Eng's books
announced last week that it was taking them off the market.' (7 March)
This furore earned Eng a
Fox News
tv interview, and
mockery
in Wired.

Denis
Guiot, editor of the 'Autres Mondes' YA sf line at the French
house Fleurus/Mango Jeunesse, threatens to resign over the editorial
board's cancellation of Nathalie Le Gendre's novel Les Orphelins de
Naja (which he had scheduled for May 2007). This denounces
paedophilia in a future colony-world church: it's not anti-church, but
the publishing group – also noted for religious texts – fears trouble
from shareholders. There's an on-line petition in support of Guiot;
several influential Autres Mondes authors say they'll switch publishers
if he has to leave. [JD-B]

Julie
Phillips's James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B.
Sheldon won the US National Book Critics Circle award for biography.

Neal
Stephenson on how we see us: 'Lack of critical respect
means nothing to sci-fi's creators and fans. They made peace with their
own dorkiness long ago. Oh, there was momentary discomfort around the
time of William Shatner's 1987 "Saturday Night Live" sketch,
in which he exhorted Trekkies to "get a life." But this had
been fully resolved by 2000, when sci-fi fans voted to give the Hugo
Award for best movie to "Galaxy Quest," a film that revolves
around making fun of sci-fi fans.' (300 film review, New
York Times, 18 March) [MF]

[Later: I am assured that despite the implied message of the
DWcon website, the same discount applies to everyone who has already
enquired, to those joining at Eastercon and other events where
discount flyers will circulate, and to anyone joining on-line before a
given date.]

Rumblings.Eastercon 2009. The Concordia (Birmingham
NEC) bid folded just before Ansible 236
appeared: LXcon (Bradford) is now unopposed. More at
www.LX2009.com and
www.conbids.org/concordia.
 SFF/BSFA. This year's now-traditional joint AGM event
will be held in Sheffield rather than boring old London. Details to
follow.

As
Others See Us. At least sf isn't as bad as fantasy, muses
Caitlin Moran of The Times while investigating World of
Warcraft: 'By and large, my theory runs, people who are into goblins
and wizards are people within the autistic spectrum of behaviour, for
whom the utopian sexual and racial equality offered by, say, sci-fi, is
alarming. All those black chicks in Lycra jumpsuits philosophising about
the fallible nature of humanity, and able to vote? Brrrr!' (Times,
26 March) [LW]

Springtime
for Lucifer. The New York Times story about plans to
film Paradise Lost is full of tasty quotations, especially from
the producer Vincent Newman. '"It's a 400-some-odd-page poem
written in Old English," he said, laughing. "How do you find
the movie in that?"' But 'if you get past the Milton of it all, and
think about the greatest war that's ever been fought, the story itself
is pretty compelling.' One must focus on essentials: 'less Adam and Eve
and more about what's happening with the archangels', since 'In Eden
there's the nudity problem ... which would be a big problem for a big
studio movie.' Then there was 'the studio executive who, halfway through
the pitch, blurted: "Wait a minute. You mean God is God?"' As
Vincent sums it up: 'This could be like The Lord of the Rings,
or bigger.' (NY Times, 4 March) [JB]

R.I.P.Arnold Drake (1924-2007), US comics writer who wrote all the
major DC Comics characters during his long career, and co-created Deadman
and Doom Patrol, died on 12 March aged 83. [PDF]
 Leigh Eddings (?-2007), US author who co-wrote many
popular fantasy novels with her husband David Eddings, died on 28
February following a series of strokes. She was 69.
 Charles Einstein (1926-2007), US author and journalist
best known in sf for The Day New York Went Dry (1964), died on 7
March aged 80.
 Freddie Francis (1917-2007), UK director and
cinematographer who directed Dr Terror's House of Horrors
(1964), Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968) and other Hammer
and Amicus horror films, died on 17 March; he was 89. [BB]
 David Honigsberg (1958-2007), US author, musician, rabbi
and fan, died from a heart attack on 27 March, aged 48. [ML]
 Gareth Hunt (1942-2007), UK actor whose genre credits
included The New Avengers, Dr Who and Space: 1999,
died from pancreatic cancer on 14 March; he was 65. [CM]
 David I.
Masson (1915-2007), UK author and rare-books librarian whose
seven 1960s sf stories all appeared in New Worlds and were
collected as The Caltraps of Time (1968), died on 25 February.
Chris Priest and I came to know him better while working on our 2003
edition of Caltraps (adding his three further 1970s stories).
His debut fiction 'Traveller's Rest' (1965) was a major highlight of
that New Worlds era. Mike Moorcock writes: 'I liked him from the
beginning. Really was surprised by the story given that the style of the
typing and so on suggested someone who had actually started with a quill
pen. Not so the style of the stories, of course. I suppose it was
inevitable he wouldn't have written much, given the quality of the
little he did write, but it's a shame he never tried for a novel.'
 Marshall Rogers (1950-2007), noted US comics artist, died
on 24 or 25 March; he was 57. [SG]
 Herman Stein (1915-2007), US composer who scored over 200
films including Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from
Outer Space, The Incredible Shrinking Man, This Island
Earth and Tarantula, died on 15 March aged 91. [CH]
 Paul Walker (1921-2007), US author and critic whose
interviews were collected as Speaking of Science Fiction (1978),
died (according to his sister) on 8 March. [MGP]

As
Others See Us II. A recommendation: 'Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped
Box: It's horrible to be among the thousands to admit you're excited
to read the work of the son of Stephen King, but we're guilty.' (US Book
Critics Circle weblog, 27 Mar) [RF]
 More on Iain Banks, crushing our hopes that there might be such a
thing as serious sf: 'Whether writing science fiction (under the name of
Iain M. Banks) or serious fiction (without the "M"), the
underlying message of Iain Banks's work is "life's a game".'
(Mark Sanderson, Sunday Telegraph review, 11 March) [AS]

Publishers
& Sinners.Jim Minz says goodbye: 'As many of you
have already heard, I no longer am working here at Del Rey (that became
official about two hours ago).' (email, 23 March)

Random
Fandom.Jyrki Kasvi, a Finnish MP seeking reelection,
has a campaign website entirely in Klingon. He explains: 'Some have
thought it is blasphemy to mix politics and Klingon ... Others say it is
good if politicians can laugh at themselves.' [FL] How side-splitting.

As
Others See Us III. A Neurologist Explains: 'What is
schizotypal? It's a more subtle version of schizophrenia. This is not
somebody who's completely socially crippled; they're just solitary,
detached: these are the lighthouse keepers, the projectionists in the
movie theaters. These are not people who are thought-disordered to the
point of being completely nonfunctional; these are people who just
believe in kinda strange stuff. They are into their Star Trek
conventions. They're into their astrology, they're into their telepathy
and their paranormal beliefs ...' (Robert Sapolsky [speech], Freethought
Today, 2003). [AC]

Outraged
Letters.Ellen Datlow on the MLA's belief (A236)
that Jonathan Lethem is 'poaching' genre concepts in his current
fiction: 'Now THIS is silly, considering Lethem was writing sf before he
moved into mainstream.' Well, yes.
 David K.M. Klaus sends a splendid movie-news headline
reporting an encounter somehow overlooked by historians: 'Revived Ninja
Turtles Defeat Spartans At Thermopylae.'

Fanfundery.GUFF: the 2007 Europe-Australasia race was announced in late
March, with a 16 April voting deadline. Candidates are Johan
Anglemark, Steve Davies, Anna Davour, and Ang Rosin. £5/$A10 voting
fee. Ballots
available on line or from 59 Shirley Rd, Croydon, CR0 7ES.
 JETS: final reminder that the voting deadline for this
one-off race to Nippon 2007 is 13 April. More at
www.astralpole.org.
 Get Harry: this one-off fund achieved its goal by taking
Harry Bell to Corflu 2007. Rob Jackson thanks all contributors and, for
anyone interested, has
published
accounts. The Bellissimo! showcase of Harry's fanzine art
remains available – proceeds now go to other fan funds.
 TAFF: $1 goes to the fund for each sale of Strange
Voyages, a 1200-page CD-ROM collection of Mike Glicksohn's fanzines
Energumen and Xenium, plus other writing, an interview,
etc. $15 post free from Taral Wayne, 245 Dunn Ave, Apt 2111, Toronto,
Ontarios, M6K 1S6, Canada.

The
Sick List.Merv Binns had a triple heart bypass
operation on 8 March and is reportedly doing well.
 Alexis Gilliland was diagnosed with prostate cancer: this
was caught early and the outlook is good.
 Michael Scott Rohan, owing to 'major nerve damage' caused
by sarcoidosis, acquired a pacemaker in March: 'Apparently I can now
look forward to a career of activating shop theft alarms and airport
security.'

Thog's
Masterclass.Sound Effects Dept (Again). 'The
Archivist tugged a handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose,
noisily and at length. Moon could hear the snot rattling through her
system like an old boiler filled with air.' (Jonathan Barnes, The
Somnambulist, 2007) [NG]
 Dept of Wicked Winks and Unclad Fish. 'Her breasts winked
at him, and he chastised himself as he felt a stir of arousal. [...] He
was sixty centimeters taller, but she wiggled like a lithe, naked eel
until a final shrewd twist toppled him from the bed.' (David Weber, Heirs
of Empire, in Empire from the Ashes, 1993) [GS]
 Far-Future Technological Prediction Dept (or, 'As You Know,
Bob'). '... composing on the keyboard, where erasure did not mean
throwing away a piece of tangible paper that could fall into the wrong
hands – and where he had an automatic copy of his exact words.' (C.J.
Cherryh, Deliverer, 2007) [PDF]
 Eyeballs in the Sky Dept. 'His eyes ran, literally,
across the whole of the upper portion of his face ...' (Richard Marsh,
The Beetle, 1897) [BA]

Jeff
Vandermeer's SFWA presidency platform proposed the unthinkable
as an April Fool jape: 'I'd make it an automatic disqualification for
any writer to lobby their friends to vote for them in any category for
the Nebula Awards. In fact, I'd appoint a volunteer whose only job would
be to ferret out voting corruption. If that didn't work, we'd take a
good, hard, long look at scrapping the Nebula Awards altogether or
making it a purely juried award.' More practicably: at each annual SFWA
junket a 'selected group of writers would be bundled into a huge wicker
representation of a nude Clark Ashton Smith. This Wickersmith would then
be doused in gasoline, set on fire, and, after an appropriate delay,
heaved over the edge of a very high cliff.' However, John Scalzi's
campaign to become SFWA President – making this a rare contested
election! – is dead serious.

Late
Report. Another death that Ansible missed: Tom
Hutchinson (?1930-2005), UK author and film critic who wrote Horror
and Fantasy in the Movies (1974), Horrors: A History of Horror
Movies (1983 with Roy Pickard), and many sf/fantasy book reviews in
the Times and elsewhere, died on 3 October 2005 aged 75. [DP]